Ivory-Billed Woodpecker

More on Caatinga Woodpecker

The following is the uncropped version of the photograph, via the BBC: A lost bird returns. The Caatinga Woodpecker (Celeus obrieni) had not been seen since its discovery in 1926 when Advaldo do Prado came across this one in eastern central Brazil. The country has more globally threatened species than any other. (Image: Guilherme R C Silva/BirdLife) Let us hope for as clear new evidence of the ivory-billed woodpecker will be developed soon. My thanks to Arthur Masloski. +++ Update from Mount Desert Islander. I found an article in Portugese with two nice pictures at this web site. From the [...]

Kokako News

It is always good to update a year old story. The Kokako ~ the New Zealand version of the ivory-billed woodpecker intrigue ~ is back in the news. The Kokako has recently been in the newspapers again, with a new sighting of this contemporary cryptid. Alec Milne, an amateur ornithologist from Golden Bay, in the Nelson region at the top of the South Island, has reported to the New Zealand Department of Conservation that he has recently heard what he believes was the call of the South Island kokako at the head of the Cobb Valley in Kahurangi National Park, [...]

Pinky Expedition: St. Johns River, Part 2

My search for Pinky continues. But I am becoming convinced from my exploration of the central St. Johns River area that Pinky reports are a probable event of the recent past, and mostly a foggy memory, at best. No current knowledge of these animals or cryptids is contemporarily apparent. The draft of the river in this area of central Florida is not supportive of ocean life such as dolphins, and other than the manatees that need to find warm springs in the cold season, it seems hard to imagine marine Sea Serpents or alleged living dinosaurs visiting “American’s Nile.” Reports [...]

Green Pigeon: New Singapore Species?

A recent new find in Asia must be understood in the larger context of how the birding community discusses “new species.” Not all talk of “new discoveries” of birds are of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker variety or level of effort, but most are of the talk of ranges, new life list records, and interlopers. As a heads-up to how insiders in birding “see the world,” there are ongoing discussions of when “new species” appear in areas they have not been seen before. This has nothing to do with the discovery of “new species,” per se, but does sometimes generate a bit [...]

Mystery Birds in Annual Christmas Counts

This is the time of year throughout North America when birders take their annual “Christmas counts.” This involves identifying and counting what bird species birders and casual observers have seen in their area. Besides the various extremely large avian cryptids that avoid detention by having small numbers, being ignored, flying too high, hiding, and remaining in remote locations, mystery birds do turn up. You have to read Christmas counts closely to find them, but they are there. Most are eventually seen as identified species that have turned up in out-of-place sites. For example, on December 29, 2007, Mike Jacobs of [...]

Ivory-Billeds & Idaho Grizzlies: Coming Quests

This file photo shows a grizzly bear moving through the brush in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. (Courtesy: Yellowstone National Park) In September 2007, a black bear hunter “mistakenly” shot and killed a grizzly bear in the “rugged Idaho terrain near Kelly Creek about three miles from the Montana border,” according to the Associated Press. The 450-pound male grizzly killed by the unidentified hunter on Labor Day, September 3rd was shot in the North Fork of the Clearwater Drainage about 20 miles north of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness boundary and within the 25,000-square-mile Bitterroot Experimental Population Area. It was the first [...]

Florida’s Ivory-Bills Photographed

Geoffrey Hill, Scharnagel Professor of Biology at Auburn University and author of Ivorybill Hunters: The Search for Proof in the Florida Panhandle told reporter Donathan Prater of the Opelika Auburn News that he has obtained three types of evidence of Ivory-billed Woodpeckers (Campephilus principalis): audio, video, and photographic. After getting a small grant, Hill and several of his colleagues traveled to the Florida Panhandle in January 2007. There, they set up listening stations and remote cameras, and indeed, did record the distinctive double-knocking sound and Kent calls the Ivory-billed Woodpecker makes. While in Florida, Hill and his colleagues were able [...]